The polystyrene foam peanuts greased an empty office in the Rayburn House office building in front of the Capitol on Monday morning, the moved men unpacked a luxurious sofa, a upholstered armchair, lamps and a lucite auxiliary table.
The representative Elise Stefanik of New York returned.
This did not have the plan.
Mrs. Stefanik, the self -proclaimed warrior “Ultra Maga” whom President Trump nominated to serve as an ambassador to the United Nations, hoped he would sail through his confirmation vote of the Senate, which was going to be dodged in early April.
Then she locked her office. She sent her former chief of Cabinet, Patrick Hester, to start a new job in the State Department, where she ended up working for seven days. He completed a “farewell tour” or its district, reviewed the schools for son in New York City and hoped to move to the attic of Manhattan of $ 15 million that is considered what is considered a fairly comfortable work.
Instead, Mrs. Stefanik was back here in Capitol Hill in the middle of the peanuts, contemplating her next steps and fixing the guilt of what happened in the speaker Mike Johnson.
To detractors, The President’s Decision to Pull Ms. Stefanik’s Nomination was submissing akin to Karmic Comeupance for a Republican Lawmaker who was elected as a moderate but tacked one Her Party in the Age in the Age in the age in the age in the age in the age in the age in the age in the age in the age in the age in the age in the age in the age at the age of the age at the age of the age at the age of the age at the age of the age at the age of the age of the age of the age of Trump.
The difficult situation of Mrs. Stefanik seemed to crystallize in a succinct warning tale the limits of loyalty in the Maga Universe. Even one of the most unconditional defenders of the president, an effective ally from the first political trial, ultimately, did not obtain what the pulmonary leg had promised.
For his followers, in principle, the implosion of his Cabinet dream was a disguised gift, one that demonstrated his temper as some willing to endure a personal setback for the good of the team and prepare it for something potentially better in the future. The results have been a new level of admiration of the president and among the main Republican donors, who now encourage her to enter the career of the New York governor by 2026.
Mrs. Stefanik, meanwhile, is taking the long -term vision.
“Resilience is one of my strengths,” he said in an interview with a letter. “We have recovered quite fast. The reality is that almost all prominent in American politics have a turn and a turn.”
However, what has been completely disintegrated since its return is its relationship with Mr. Johnson, a dynamic that establishes a clash between two loyal and leaders of Trump in the chamber that could become ugly as the speaker tries to approve the president’s internal policy agenda.
Mrs. Stefanik is doing little to hide the fact that Mr. Johnson is dishonest. On Tuesday, she called him publicly a liar after he told the journalists that he was “having conversations” with her and the representative Mike Lawler, another Republican of New York flirting with a career for governor, about that race.
“This is not true,” he wrote on social networks. “I have no conversations with the speaker with respect to the governor’s career.”
The publication caused an immediate phone call from Mr. Johnson, who was publicly corrected.
“Elise is one of my closest friends,” journalists told the Capitol on Tuesday. “We carry it specifically about her postulates for governor. She comes to visit me and everything is fine.”
Behind the scene, however, the relationship has collapsed.
After the nomination of Mrs. Stefanik retired, the speaker promised him a position at the leadership table; In the last congress, she served as president of the conference, Republican number 4, and said publicly that she would also return to the Intelligence Committee. That would require eliminating a republican from the panel, to maintain the number of Democrats and Republicans.
In private, according to the family of three people with the exchange, Mr. Johnson told him that he was considering eliminating another Republican, be it the representative French Hill or Arkansas or the representative Pat Fallon of Texas, to make a space for Mrs. Stefanik.
But Mr. Johnson has not done it or has simply discussed it, and has not yet solved the problem of how to return the EM. Stefanik to the committee.
At the beginning of April, when a White House official called Mrs. Stefanik to launch her vote on the president’s budget, she expressed her frustration that the speaker has not yet fulfilled any of the promises that Johnson had made in a three -way call previous with Trump after the withdrawal of her nomination.
Under the pressure of the White House, Mr. Johnson called her and told her that Hey had many angry members to deal with, according to two people familiar with the exchange.
Mrs. Stefanik, who once was close to Mr. Johnson and spent part of the night of the elections with him in his hometown, Shreveport, Louisiana, backed away and said bluntly: “I am the most angry.”
It was only after that heated conversation, and at a time when she was a necessary vote on the budget, which Johnson finally announced her as the new “president of the republican leadership of the Chamber.”
Before the elections, Kevin McCarthy, the former speaker, warned him that he could face winds against to get out of the camera if the Republicans managed to maintain control with a tight margin.
After they did exactly that, it was immediately clear that the poaching of the Republicans of the House of Representatives for the Cabinet Posts was going to be Dany.
After former representatives Matt Gaetz and Michael Waltz de Florida resigned to follow positions in the Trump administration, Mrs. Stefanik was trapped in a kind of purgatory.
“If we obtain the budget resolution this week, which is the plan, then it is possible that Elise Stefanik continues and advances to his assignment at the UN as ambassador there,” Johnson said in February, a forceful recognition of the political reality of his thin majority. “He had 220 Republicans and 215 Democrats, and then President Trump assumed that he sacrifices the pack.”
Mrs. Stefanik was always aware of the problem of mathematics, people close to her said. But his high -level assistant now blame Mr. Johnson for avoiding a direct conversation with her about her concerns about the vote margin. Instead, they said, he silently tried to delay inheritance and poison the well against his nomination along with other secret movements to walk slowly while saying he supported him.
Mr. Johnson, who said publicly that Mrs. Stefanik would be a great ambassador, has gathered that he notices to get in his way. A spokesman for Mr. Johnson, Taylor Haulsee, said that the time of the confirmation of Mrs. Stefanik was “an issue for the White House and the Senate to be resolved” and that the speaker had a leg to support him.
Even so, the Republican conference is already a place of little confidence among the members, which often assume that their colleagues are trying to stab them in the back. And the explosion between Mrs. Stefanik and Mr. Johnson has led to a greater dissemination of the speaker, according to other legislators who did not want to talk about the record about a fight between colleagues.
For now, Mrs. Stefanik is achieving campaign donations due to what her allies are framing as a selfless decision to be a team player. She has $ 10 million in cash, said attendees.
After Mr. Trump’s official achieved his nomination at the end of March, Newt Giningrich, the former speaker, called Mrs. Stefanik to remind him that when the cabinet nominees implude, they are generally due to the fact that her own problems have jeopardized her confirmation chans. In this case, he was close, he said.
The races are long, he assured him, and after all, he was only 40 years old.
Mr. McCarthy also advises him to keep things in perspective.
“My first advice is to return to the horse, go to television immediately, prepare the stage as it is,” he said, he said. “The game needs it; she is such a strong voice. No one will remember this next week. It is a leg in leadership more time than the speaker.”
The President has promised Mrs. Stefanik of Mrs. Stefanik in her administration in the future. And now he is free to appear on television, what he could not do while his nomination was pending.
“In many ways, this has a more liberating leg in the opening of multiple paths to serve me the strongest New Yorkers than ever,” he said in the interview.
Winning a governor career in the state of New York is a remote possibility for any republican candidate, but donors and agents who press Mrs. Stefanik to enter as a winning gain for her to challenge Democratic governor Kathy Hochul. Running in New York would win a lot of attention and could prepare it for something else in the future. Some of his allies indicate the case of Lee Zeldin, who lost the career of the Governor of New York in 2022 and landed as administrator of the EPA of Mr. Trump.
Not everyone wants Washington to leave.
“Are you calling the future speaker of the house?” Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump advisor and Podcast presenter, said when he was asked to talk about Mrs. Stefanik. “I advise you to keep all the options open at this time. It is in a perfect position. Trump only thinks he walks on the water right now. He was a soldier. He is solid like a rock.”
“Porto made a decision yet,” Stefanik said about the governor’s career, “but I feel honored with the tremendous effusion of voters’ support throughout the state.”
Alex Degrasse, an advisor for a long time of Mrs. Stefanik, said that the 10 -year door in Congress, Mrs. Stefanik has won constantly independent and about 20 percent of the Democrats.
“She has the Larst donor base of any Republican in New York,” he said. “Then, of course, she is looking firmly.”
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